As we seek to follow Jesus together, we give him thanks for you, and the journey we're sharing. May we continue to be the church together.
I'd also like to share couple of thoughts for Christmas with you...
The birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it.
- Frederick Buechner, "Listening to Your Life," Christianity Today, Vol. 37, no. 15
Life is a constant Advent season: we are continually waiting to become, to discover, to complete, to fulfill. Hope, struggle, fear, expectation and fulfillment are all part of our Advent experience.
The world is not as just, not as loving, not as whole as we know it can and should be. But the coming of Christ and his presence among us—as one of us—give us reason to live in hope: that light will shatter the darkness, that we can be liberated from our fears and prejudices, that we are never alone or abandoned
May this Advent season be a time for bringing hope, transformation and fulfillment into the Advent of our lives.”
- "Life Is an Advent Season," Connections, 11-28-93
May you be confident in the way of Jesus, finding hope and peace in knowing the God who is with us.
If you're in town this weekend, I hope you'll join us for our family Christmas celebration on Sunday morning at 10am. We gather to encounter God together, to worship the God who is with us. Our time together will include experiential elements for the whole family as we journey through the story of the coming of Christ...the story that invites us to life with God!
It's been an exciting couple of months for the watershed family, with several new friends joining us for the journey of life with God. We're still a young family and learning how to best share the joys and challenges of life together. My prayer has been that we will continue to listen to the voice of God together to find our way forward.
That means we need you!
As part of our family, we rely on the work of God in your life to help us be who God wants us to be. Where is God leading you to join his work in the world? Who are the people you can share the journey with? How can we help one another pursue God together?
Shortly after the beginning of the year, we'll have several specific opportunities for you to experience more of what we mean when we say "be the church." Some of these opportunities include:
discover watershed | a forum for you to hear the watershed story and share your ideas for the next chapter.
neighborhood connections | a group of people committed to"doing life" together: serving, laughing, growing, sharing, crying, praying living.
going deeper | groups of people who want to connect around a specific topic or area of interest.
play a part | getting involved in the needs of the world around us and sharing the opportunities with one another.
Stay tuned for more details and specifics about each of these opportunities.
We all have a way of seeing and understanding the world: a map for life, if you will. Our gatherings last Sunday and this coming Sunday invite us to consider the map we're using to make sense of the world...how good is your map? Does it reflect the way the world really is, or is it like a map that places the Great Wall of China and the Eiffel Tower in the middle of Stoughton: interesting but not at all helpful.
This week we're exploring how our maps help us understand a world full of beauty and love and honor, while at the same time dealing with pain, injustice and violence. We need a map that helps us find our way through this kind of world with hope and wisdom, and a God who joins us in the midst of it. Could the story of the Bible help us to understand all of this?
How about you? What do you think this world is like? Is it getting better or worse? Does your faith help you make sense of the world we live in? Does it help you make better sense of life?
Over the past month or so, we've been considering ways that we might rethink Christmas in order to worship fully, spend less, give more and love all. One way that you and your family might consider doing that is to use a portion of what you would have spent on Christmas gifts to help provide for other significant needs in Stoughton and around the world. Some families are spending less money on Christmas gifts, and giving more of their time and relational energy: the gift of presence.
If you'd like to conspire with us and give financially toward meeting the needs of the world around us, you can do so this coming Sunday or the next (Dec 14 or 21) by putting your donation in the Joy Box at our gathering, or mailing your donation to watershed at 808 Valley View Drive, Stoughton, WI 53589. Checks can be made out to watershed, and please include a note that it's for Advent Conspiracy, and we'll be sure to get it to the right place.
The watershed family will be using the money collected to support the work of Possibilities Africa and providing direct help (food, transportation, heat) to those in need in the Stoughton community.
We'll be sure to let you know more about what happens through our conspiracy to rethink Christmas and join God's work in the world.
The leaves are down, and we have a few opportunities to rake and do some general fall cleanup for MARC & HeadStart. We'll meet at MARC Stoughton this coming Saturday, November 22nd at 9am. Bring a rake, bush trimmers, gloves, a leaf blower or whatever else might help out with fall cleanup. If you know of someone else who could use help raking or fall cleanup, please let Jeff L know (email or 347-7705).
Capturing Your Dream
As you consider your dreams, we'd love to capture what you're thinking in some kind of tangible way. Will you consider how you might be able to share your dream through art, music, writing, video, or whatever works for you? We'd love to keep these dreams in front of us as we continue exploring how to live a life that matters, pursuing the dreams of God for our life together.
Living A Life That Matters
What have you discovered about your dreams? Are they helping you to live a life that matters? Over the next 2 weeks, we'll go deeper into helping you discover more about how you can live a life of significance and purpose, even while we're in the process of figuring out our dreams.
If you've been a part of gatherings in the past few weeks, I hope you've been considering how your dreams might be connected to the work of God in the world. God is the author of all things good, true, just, right and beautiful, and he is inviting you to join that work and discover the life you've been dreaming of.
This goes way beyond a dream job or a dream vacation and points us to the God who made us and invites us to encounter him everyday in the ordinary moments of life. Following the way of Jesus leads us to discover this life with God, a life beyond short-sighted dreams. The Bible says it this way in 1 John 2:
Don't love the world's ways. Don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world - wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important - has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. (The Message & TNIV)
As you consider your dreams, we'd love to capture what you're thinking in some kind of tangible way. Will you consider how you might be able to share your dream through art, music, writing, video, or whatever works for you? We'd love to keep these dreams in front of us as we continue exploring how to live a life that matters, pursuing the dreams of God for our life together.
On Thanksgiving Eve, the watershed family has been invited to join together with other church families from the Stoughton community. The evening's service will be a celebration of thankfulness for God's work in our community.
I hope you will consider joining us if you are in town on Thanksgiving Eve. While the service will have a more traditional flavor, Jeff L has been invited to share a short message during the service. Please pray for his preparation and for God to provide a word of encouragement and challenge to all followers of Christ who gather that evening.
The service will be held at Covenant Lutheran Church at 1525 N. Van Buren St. in Stoughton at 7pm on November 26th.
Each church participating has been asked to have one person serve as an usher, and one person do a short reading. If you would like to participate with this, please let Jeff L know (email).
The story of Christ's birth is a subversive story of an upside-down kingdom. It's a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love that is still changing the world to this day. So, what happened? What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists. And when it's all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt that will take months to pay off, and this empty feeling that we somehow missed its purpose.
Is this what we really want out of Christmas?
What if Christmas became a world-changing event again by turning our focus back to the birth of Christ? What could happen to your family if this focus was celebrated in loud, bold and totally unexpected ways? What if you could actually trade your season of stress for a season celebration and unbelievable memories with your friends and family? What if all of this could save a life at the same time? It can.
Welcome to Advent Conspiracy
What could happen if the watershed family joined together in letting Christ lead us to spend less, give more, love all this Christmas?
